Project info for MARIE

Okay, first things first, I am an amatuer roboticist who could use a little help in becoming a pro. Marie started out as a tracked robot capable of obstacle avoidance. She had a head with blinking eyes, rotating neck, could nod, and the mouth was motorised, so an input signal(amplified) could make it move almost life like. She had hands that could lift just their weight, with enough juice to grasp an object (conviniently placed of course :)) and lift it. Hand had three degrees freedom of movement, i.e grasp/ungrasp, raise/lower arm, and raise/lower hand. Mounted on wheels, that was basically it. connect an audio source and Marie could "sing" while making ramdom arm movings (a jerky dance). Now the worst part of this was Marie was all mechanical, no fancy software, apart from the amplifier bit. but everything including obstacle avoidance was all done mechanically. This is because I am in Africa, and such things as OOpics or Basic Stamps or AVRs are a far fetched dream. Servos and steppers have to be hacked off old printers and floppies. So.. it's kinda hard. The Next Generation Marie is going to be an autonomous morphing robot. hopefully with a speech bank and better enviroment sensors. Quadruped to Biped Morph. I know it sounds crazy, but hey........ that's how all dreams start out. Anyone with ideas can mail me at bengeking@yahoo.com